A Year Out Of Time: 2020
2020 feels as if it were a year out of time. Hours felt like days and weeks like months. Yet here we finally are on the cusp of 2021. I’m not going to speculate about what the new year may bring, but I do hope it will bring for all of us more peace, some justice, large scale relief from the pandemic, and perhaps even a chance to see long-missed friends and family and maybe to travel to as yet unvisited locales.
In a way, life beyond the pandemic is itself an unvisited locale, one whose topography we can only guess at for now while hoping we have the opportunity to explore it soon.
As a writer I found 2020 challenging. The events of the year themselves took quite a psychological and emotional toll on many writers and artists, not just me. Of course I’m sorry for the toll it has taken on others while personally finding it reassuring, in that weird human way, that it wasn’t just me struggling.
At the beginning of each year I try to set a few general goals for myself. At the end of the year I look back to see how it went.
In January 2020 I did not predict the shutdowns and the careening political situation, much less the form taken by the USA election and its drawn out post election period. January 20th will not bring a panacea of instant change but perhaps many of us will be able to relax a tiny bit at that point.
My biggest goal for 2020 was to seek validation in myself rather than relying on external validation, and I do believe I am in a better place now than I was a year ago, so I will take that as an accomplishment I can hope to build on.
What did I accomplish in writing terms in 2020?
Not as much as I had hoped, to be honest. And yet, it’s also good news.
PUBLICATIONS:
UNCONQUERABLE SUN was published by Tor Books (USA/Canada) in July and by Head of Zeus (UK/Commonwealth) in October. The book received four starred reviews in trade journals (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews) and was reviewed favorably in The Guardian and the Financial Times (UK).
“The Long Walk” is a novelette published in THE BOOK OF DRAGONS, edited by Jonathan Strahan, published by Harper Collins worldwide (also in July 2020). The story is set up as an unrolling scroll: the point of view character starts in one place and continues moving onward to new places, never retracing her steps.
“When I Grow Up” is a short story set in the Spiritwalker Universe about 14 years after the end of COLD STEEL (book 3 of the trilogy). If all goes well, it will be published online at The Book Smugglers on December 31. It’s intended as a gift to my readers in honor of the 10th anniversary of the publication of COLD MAGIC (2010).
COMPLETED PROJECTS:
In January 2020 I turned in fantasy novella LAMPLIGHTER to Lee Harris at Tordotcom Publishing. This novella is set in an entirely new world and stands alone as a complete story. Publication tentatively set for 2022.
As noted above, I completed “When I Grow Up.”
I also wrote a short story titled “Into the Cleft of Bones” for an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams on the theme of lost worlds and mythological kingdoms. I don’t have a publication date or confirmed title for the anthology but maybe the first half of 2021? All of publishing has truly been thrown into turmoil by the pandemic and its long-ranging effects. Some days it’s worthwhile simply to be grateful for art and the ability to work.
IN PROGRESS:
I had surely hoped and planned to have a draft of SUN 2 (FURIOUS HEAVEN) completed long before the end of 2020 but I do not yet have a compete draft.
I made a great start at the beginning of the year. Then, as with many, I got thrown for a loop in large part because writing takes so much mental, psychological, and emotional energy, and a great deal of that energy got sucked away by ongoing pandemic and political situations. Not that I could do much about them but anticipation and anxiety wreak havoc by, shall we say, trampling through creative fields that need to be nurtured and given time and space to grow in order to let the creative act flower. That’s a bit of a mixed and overdrawn metaphor but I stand by it. Just as plants need sun and water, so does creativity.
This leaves me at the end of 2020 with about 135,000 words of FURIOUS HEAVEN. Yes, I know that is the length of a normal book by writers who are smarter and more succinct than I am, and I often wish I were them and not me, but here we are.
Usually I write a complete first draft before I even consider any revision. In this case I ended up revising the first 80,000 words or so THREE TIMES before finally getting the plot lined up in a way that seems to work. Normally I would not allow my editor to look at any parts of an unfinished draft because, in the early stages, feedback tends to get in my way as I slash and hack a path forward through the tangled forest of my thoughts (I’m going for botanical metaphors this month). But I was so frustrated and stymied that I sent her the second revision, and she pinpointed a specific thing (I can’t tell you what because it would be a spoiler) and asked me to think about making it more central to the plot. This worked (so I believe, although we’re not out of the woods yet). Thank you, Miriam.
Once I had re-re-revised this opening (yes, yes, I know 80,000 words isn’t an “opening” so don’t @ me), I asked my friend Ken Liu to read the revised-revised-revised opening 40 pages or so because I have to introduce so many characters (given that this is an ensemble story) and it felt like too much but at the same time I couldn’t figure out how to get around all those introductions. The chapters I sent him started with Sun’s point of view. His suggestion was simple: keep everything, but make sure the first chapter is from Persephone’s point of view because her take on people is always memorable. It proved to be easy as pie to make this switch, and he (like my editor) was absolutely correct. Thanks, Ken.
All this to say, sometimes it’s necessary to change up the ways writing, or any kind of long-standing process, works. I got early feedback even though I don’t usually, and it was what I needed at this time for this project. There is no secret handshake or One True Technique, just the road ahead with new challenges to adapt to.
There are a lot of lessons to be taken from this past year, which I won’t attempt to address here because so many of them are not pleasant. But one of the more positive ones is that sometimes being stymied can create a path to taking a risk or a new road. It’s not always the right time to shake things up, but it’s worth knowing that when it is, it’s absolutely okay to go for it.
WHAT’S NEW?
Next month’s newsletter I’ll talk about what’s up with various long-standing projects.
I officially launched a Patreon in November 2020. At the moment I have four ongoing “on Patreon series” (I like organized things because otherwise I get overwhelmed by possibility): a weekly Finn photo; a twice-monthly “Nuts & Bolts” essay on an aspect of writing craft or business or process; a once-a-month “Draft History” or other glimpse into early drafts, abandoned drafts, cut scenes, etc (I’m currently excavating Crossroads 4); and a once-a-month Portals series (for the higher tiers only) that gives glimpses into unpublished projects I’m slowly building.
This newsletter will continue as is, on a more or less monthly schedule.
AUDIO STORIES!
Serial Box has licensed the rights to produce audio versions of all of my short stories that do not have another audio version elsewhere. I’m super excited to have these stories available in audio form. You can find them at their web site.
In honor of the end of the year, this photo of Finn caught in the act of changing directions as I think we all have once or twice or thrice this past year.
As always, thank you. I couldn’t do this without you.
All best wishes for a safe, secure, and more peaceful New Year.
Kate Elliott